I've always been pretty into food and the idea of flavors. It seems like a weird thing to be fascinated with but the more I travel and taste different flavors around the world, the bigger this hobby or mere interest becomes. I'm guessing this interest started when I was young. My family is Croatian and we are continuously surrounded by European/Balkan food at home and place a heavy emphasis on eating real food, not junk or heavily processed. Somewhere along the way, I became interested in eating food for the flavors, not just for the purpose of eating to feel full. My dad probably cultivated this out of me. He's always on his phone looking up cool places to eat, ordering the strangest of seafood, and encouraging me to taste different flavors. Whatever I don't eat or deem too weird, my dad finishes it off shaking his head at me for being too "boring".
The memory that always comes to mind when I think of strange food would be when I was 8. My family was in Beijing for vacation and for my dad's work conference. I remember this one day when we were walking along a street full of food venders when my dad stopped to buy something. My sister Gabi and I were in awe of the amount of food the street venders were selling and we kept ourselves busy by pointing out the coolest food on the street. Moments later my dad came back holding a stick with snake skin. Gabi's and I's mouths dropped open, our eyes widening as my dad began munching on the skin. "It's really quite good" my dad said, trying to convince my mom, who was beside herself, that the skin was worth the money. Eating snake skin had never crossed any of our minds and seemed to be the weirdest thing you could eat until my dad wanted to buy a fried tarantula.
The snake skin and tarantula always remind me of "normalcy". It's weird to think that some people think what I eat is weird. Whenever I go back to Croatia, I see the "normal" things I eat, like poli or mlince. God forbid me explaining anything I eat in Croatia that's not found in the US because people always find some way to make a disgusted face. But I'm not much better either. For example, I think marshmallows on top of sweet potato is the worst combination of food I've ever tasted. Why put fake tasting sweet stuff on top of already sweet carbs? To me, it doesn't make sense.
The memory that always comes to mind when I think of strange food would be when I was 8. My family was in Beijing for vacation and for my dad's work conference. I remember this one day when we were walking along a street full of food venders when my dad stopped to buy something. My sister Gabi and I were in awe of the amount of food the street venders were selling and we kept ourselves busy by pointing out the coolest food on the street. Moments later my dad came back holding a stick with snake skin. Gabi's and I's mouths dropped open, our eyes widening as my dad began munching on the skin. "It's really quite good" my dad said, trying to convince my mom, who was beside herself, that the skin was worth the money. Eating snake skin had never crossed any of our minds and seemed to be the weirdest thing you could eat until my dad wanted to buy a fried tarantula.
The snake skin and tarantula always remind me of "normalcy". It's weird to think that some people think what I eat is weird. Whenever I go back to Croatia, I see the "normal" things I eat, like poli or mlince. God forbid me explaining anything I eat in Croatia that's not found in the US because people always find some way to make a disgusted face. But I'm not much better either. For example, I think marshmallows on top of sweet potato is the worst combination of food I've ever tasted. Why put fake tasting sweet stuff on top of already sweet carbs? To me, it doesn't make sense.
You make a really good point about the definition of normal. Because each society/culture has a different one. In the united states, for example, at least 50% of people hate mayonnaise, but in the region that my mom grew up (Baku, Azerbaijan) mayonnaise was such a delicacy that 99/100 times the stores were all sold out, and she lived in the biggest city in the country.
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